Good lord man. I’m not having a philosophical discussion about idealism and materialism.

But we are. We are specifically talking about ideology, how it relates to the PRC, and your own thought process.

I’m not religious and I don’t believe in the supernatural, if you need to know. I’m by training and engineer, physicist and mathematician.

And yet you use supernatural explanation by treating phenomena as unknowable, ie not a part of the material realm, and appeal to a vague "human spirit."

I also don’t believe that any ideological system can approach perfection, and I’m pragmatic enough to understand that if you believe that, it is borderline delusional.

This is what I mean. You are appealing to the idea that no ideology can correctly understand the world and help us understand it better. Your own ideology is idealist.

I don’t think China has a perfect society and I expect I would not be happy there. I’m perfectly happy here with 3 kids, my pets, my wife (who owns a small business), a modest house and a family cottage, on a decent salaried job, in a country with a reasonable approximation of universal health care (I wish it were better), that makes attempts at regulating the excesses of capitalism with social programs and government oversight, that gives some freedoms in respect of rights, that values individual liberty and doesn’t get in your business on everything, that doesn’t overwhelmingly exert its will outside of its territory, that allows me to build a small consulting business and occasionally rent our cottage, that has a proud military history of which I have taken a small part, that is open to immigrants and ranks very high on multiculturalism and low on racism, that has enormous economic potential with one of the most educated populations in the world, that ranks highly in press freedom, democracy and economic mobility.

You live in an imperialist settler-colony as a well-off person married to a business owner. Your own class outlook is forcing you to see the world through a specific lense, and is pushing you towards idealism. You're a labor aristocrat married to a petite bourgeois, and an occasional landlord.

My country has problems, but you’re not going to convince me that I’d be better off under a government like China, or a Marxist ideal, even if I thought it would be possible to change this country without enormous violent upheaval in which, very likely, members of my family or friends would suffer and die.

You probably wouldn't be better off, personally, but the global south would be better off without Canada imperializing it of its surplus value and resources. Your class interest has made you hostile to working class, internationalist perspectives. This is your own, idealist philosophy.

And as I’ve tried to say since my very first words on this topic, you’re not going to convince me that a government organized according to Marxist thought will be - unlike every other human organization in history (that is, not ideal, but in practice and based on historical evidence and experience) - somehow a utopia that is incapable of oppressing people or attempting to exert its will on others who do not consent to it.

I have never said Marxists cannot oppress people, just that Marxism-Leninism is anti-imperialist, and that fighting imperialists is a good thing. Landlords, the bourgeoisie, etc would be oppressed by Marxist governments as their property is collectivized.

Having said all of that, my claims are clear. What is your objective in this discussion? Of what are you trying to convince me?

I suppose I am trying to convince you to become a class traitor and side with the working classes, or highlight for other working class folks the flaws in idealist thinking that you display.